What should I use to clean walls before painting in a kitchen that has years of grease buildup?

A kitchen with years of cooking grease on the walls needs TSP (trisodium phosphate) or a heavy-duty degreaser before any paint will stick — regular dish soap and water simply does not remove the fine oil film that coats kitchen surfaces and causes new paint to peel or crawl.

Cooking grease is invisible as a uniform film but very much present on every kitchen surface near the stove, on cabinet faces, and across walls up to a metre from the cooking area. Over years, it builds into a sticky, tacky layer that new paint cannot bond to properly. You might not feel it with your fingers, but run your palm along an unpainted kitchen wall and smell it — that slightly greasy, food smell tells you the surface is contaminated. Painting over it without cleaning means your new paint job starts failing within a year.

TSP (trisodium phosphate) is the professional painter's standard for kitchen cleaning before repainting. It's a powder you mix with warm water — typically 2-4 tablespoons per 4 litres — and apply with a sponge, scrubbing the surface firmly. TSP is alkaline and cuts through grease, oil, and accumulated cooking residue thoroughly. It's available at paint stores and hardware stores across NB for a few dollars per box. Wear rubber gloves and eye protection — TSP is caustic. After cleaning, rinse the walls with clean water and let them dry completely before priming. Traditional TSP requires careful rinsing; some TSP-substitute products (Savogran TSP-PF, or similar) are phosphate-free and skip the rinsing step, though many painters still prefer the rinsing routine to be sure.

If TSP feels like overkill for a lightly greasy kitchen, a dedicated degreaser like Krud Kutter, Simple Green, or a commercial sugar soap product (popular in NB and across Canada for pre-paint cleaning) works very well. Mix according to directions, apply with a sponge or cloth, scrub, and rinse. Sugar soap is gentle enough to use without gloves for most people but effective enough for moderate kitchen grime.

Focus your cleaning effort strategically. The zone within about a metre of the stove — both the wall behind it and the adjacent wall sections — will have the heaviest grease accumulation. Cabinets above the stove and the range hood area are also heavily contaminated. The far side of the kitchen near the sink or dining area may only need a lighter cleaning pass. Adapting your effort to where the contamination actually is saves time without cutting corners.

Once cleaned and dry, apply a coat of primer before your finish paint — even if you're repainting in the same colour. Grease-contaminated walls, even after cleaning, benefit from a bonding primer or an oil-based primer like Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3, which gives an extra layer of adhesion insurance. For NB kitchens that see heavy cooking use, finish with a satin or semi-gloss paint — these sheens resist moisture and grease and can be wiped down repeatedly without losing their finish, unlike flat or eggshell paints.

For a seriously neglected kitchen — a rental property that wasn't cleaned between tenants, or a home where someone cooked heavily for 20+ years without cleaning the walls — professional cleaning and painting is worth every dollar. The prep work on those surfaces is genuinely labour-intensive and getting it wrong means an expensive redo.

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